Value of links from Directories - Worth it ?

Google recently began penalizing many directories for selling links. Therefore you should be very careful when choosing which directories to get links from. You should also avoid letting your link building become overly dependent on directories. Our advice is to keep directories under 15-20% of your overall link mix

 

Gnet, from all what you are saying I reckon you are not helpful at all for someone new willing to learn. I just had a good laugh reading your comments.
I'm in the directory industry for quite a while and I built and developed over 150 directories so far. Let me tell you how non sense is what you are saying.
I'm also quite into SEO managing some big campaigns for many real big companies.
So...hmmm...directories...where did you get the thing with 80% of directories being spam? Proof please
Where did you get the thing with directory links de-ranking websites? Proof please...
Where did you get the thing with general directories being worthless? Proof please...btw...dmoz, business.com, botw, yahoo are all general directories in case you didn't know
Where did you get the thing that free directories are even worthless than the paid ones? Proof please
Now let me tell you something...I own a few free directories which went from pr0 to pr4 or pr5 this update. If google gave them such a high pr it means that the people working there must have found some quality, right?
I also have a free directory which is pr4 with over 35,000 backlinks, 13,000 indexed pages, and lots of inner pages with pr...probably this is also worthless in your opinion, right? (you are a seo specialist, what the hell...)

Ok...rule number 1. - there is no evidence that google will devalue your links from any directory in the serps.More than that there is no evidence that google will penalize your site for a so called "bad link". if they think the link is worthless and irrelevant they simply don't count it but never de-value or penalize your site...so what you are saying is non sense.

Rule number 2. - Every link in any directory (free or paid) is relevant as long as it has been submited into the right category where obviously there are some other related links. So for instance if you submit your travel site into the /travel category of a directory and it is on a page with other travel sites that's going to be more than relevant (as long as there are not more than 20 links or so on that page). Obviously a paid directory is much more accurate and offer a bit more quality than a free one but this is not a general rule as there are many excellent free directories around.

Rule number3. - You said that 80% of the directories are spam. Non-sense. I would rather say that 5% to 10% are low quality directories but not spam at all. Obviously there are some silly directory owners who never sort the links properly so on a travel category you might find business or health sites. These directories does not deserve the submitting effort but it doesn't mean that your link will be devaluated. Probably google won't give it any importance and this is all it can be.

Right...I can write another 12 hours explaining how wrong you are but I will stop here. I think you should go back to SEO basics instead of preaching them. BTW...checked one of your signatures with blog posts...have you ever heard about duplicate content?

Hope this helps on your further development as a SEO specialist and also I hope this clarify the matter a bit so guys if you want to submit in directories, please do so... directories links helps a lot

Thanks

 

I couldn't agree any more loredan, you deserve a rep for that post.

- Meti